Finding his place in history

John Hay modestly insisted that the unique opportunities that came his way during an extraordinary life, and the accomplishments that resulted from them, were just the result of fortunate accidents. His public career began when he was in his 20s and became the assistant private secretary to Abraham Lincoln in the White House, where, living and working in close quarters, he grew close to the...

Making the personal universal

The title of John Irving’s latest novel is a declaration of its ambition. In One Person is an attempt to capture the harrowing personal journey of a single man as he finds his own sexual, emotional and even literary identity—and to capture it in a way that matters to every single person who picks up the novel. In that way, In One Person had to become a book not just about a single...

Whodunit Column by Bruce Tierney

Prolific author John Lescroart is best known for his series featuring criminal defense attorney Dismas Hardy. Once a clever supporting character in the Hardy novels, P.I. Wyatt Hunt has at last come into his own in Treasure Hunt. If history is any indication, though, Hunt will not be the solo star player for long, as his protégé Mickey Dade seems well-poised to take his turn in the limelight....

The myth and music of Miles

Miles Davis was a modern jazz master and in some ways the Picasso of his musical milieu a difficult, cantankerous, peculiar, tortured man who was, of course, a genius. Although he grew up comfortably in Southern Illinois as the son of a prominent dentist, he had an angry, rebellious black man's attitude. Born in 1926, he showed his musical talent early on, trekking to New York City to study at...

hrillers are funny things; like most genre fiction, they tend to be formulaic, but conversely they are most successful when they break the rules. Irish writer John Connolly does a good job of "writing outside the box" in his new novel, Dark Hollow, a Stephen King-meets-Robert B. Parker tale of murder, mobsters and the macabre. Charlie "Bird" Parker, introduced in Connolly's first novel, Every...

A tale of a prodigy

Oh, pity the prodigy, Farkle McBride! With these words, John Lithgow begins his first children's book, The Remarkable Farkle McBride. Young Farkle is so gifted at music that he masters every instrument too quickly. Naturally he becomes bored, and he winds up constantly searching for a new musical high. The story is amusing and charming, and the illustrations are gorgeous. Lithgow yes, the...

A promising, unsettling debut

Paeans to a host of other latter-day crime-writing icons abound in this dark first novel of deprivation, detection and dissection. Former NYPD Detective Charlie "Birdman" Parker, has really had it bad. The son of a child-killing cop, Parker's alcoholism destroyed his marriage in name, while a deranged killer ended it in reality by gruesomely murdering his wife and child. Having...